A Glimpse at Kindergarten

Owen has now finished up his first term of Kindergarten at Westchester Elementary School. Here's a picture of Owen's class outside their classroom.  They made this sign to help support the St. Louis Cardinals as they compete in the World Series.  (Owen is on the bottom row, second from the left).

We also got Owen's school pictures back this past week.  Here's Owen's first school picture.  He picked out one of his favorite shirts to wear for the occasion.

Here's a picture of Owen's Kindergarten Class.  From left to right - Top row: Mrs. Wright, Adam, Tyler, Elsie, Corrina, Bobby, Hannah, Meghan, Henry, Ms. Kopp.  Second Row: Ryan, Molly, Jayna, Charlie, Marcella, Duncan. Front Row: Owen, James, Harry.

Some of Owen's favorite parts of school are: recess, PE, field trips, and the Westchester Woods. He won't admit it, but from our after school conversations he also likes music, art, and computers.  His reading is also progressing well and his handwriting is definitely improving.  I look forward to seeing how he continues to grow and progress the rest of this year.

MayLynn's First Hair Cut

My little girl had a mullet. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.  I've been watching it grow longer and longer and kept telling myself that I needed to give her a hair cut.  Finally, today it happened.  I took my cute little girl, put her in her booster seat, and gave her a book to read to keep her entertained. Here's a picture of her before I started:

You can't see it very well in this picture, but she had a layer of hair that came down just to the top of her neck (from where the hair grew back in to her baby bald spot) and I wanted to cut the longer hair to match it's length. So, I took a deep breath to gather in all of my bravery and went ahead with the scissors, made a couple of cuts to remove the long scraggly hair, and a couple more to round it out and get rid of a few long hairs. Here was the final result:

She sat still and quiet throughout the whole process and was excited to go look in the mirror when I was done to see the "pitty gil" in the mirror. Here's one last picture of her with her hair dry and lying a little more naturally:

Now that her first haircut is over I am pleasantly pleased with how it turned out and once again amazed at the difference between boys and girls (it's still hard to give Owen a haircut :).

A Trip to the Pumpkin Farm

Since Bryce is out of town this weekend, I decided to have some special fun with the kids to keep them from missing their daddy as much.  Since it is October and we live in a area surrounded by farms, I did some research and decided to take the kids to Stuckmeyer's Farm in Fenton, MO.  They had some fun Halloween themed activities and each of the kids got to pick one mini pumpkin to paint this weekend and one other pumpkin to carve with Daddy next weekend.

One part of the farm that they liked was the little red wagon that they pulled the pumpkins around in and that I got to pull them in when they had played themselves out.  I even got them to pose as cute little pumpkins themselves. Another part of the farm that they really enjoyed was the kid-sized corn maze.  We ran through the maze numerous times and I even managed to take a couple of good pictures of the kids enjoying themselves in the maze.

We also had fun riding the tricycles and playing in the sandbox and playground.  Owen's favorite part of the farm was being outside and he said that he liked "all of it." MayLynn seemed to prefer the sandbox, though the corn maze was a close second. I just had fun being with my kids and showing them that pumpkins grow outside and don't just come from the store.

Playing at the farm didn't take Daddy's place, but it did help me get the kids wiggles out for the morning and we had a lot of fun together.

The First Two Weeks of October

I haven't taken too many pictures so far this month, but that doesn't mean that we haven't been doing anything, because we've been quite busy.  The first big event of the month was my birthday, which we started celebrating the weekend before when Bryce took me to see a local showing of My Fair Lady.  We had a whole lot of fun and it was a great start to my birthday celebration.  We celebrated my actual birthday by having the sister missionaries over for dinner.  I always enjoy feeding the missionaries, and I especially enjoyed sharing my birthday with them.  The following Saturday the kids and I had a lot of fun making and decorating cupcakes, and then on Sunday we had some of Bryce's students and the sister missionaries again over to have cupcakes and homemade ice cream.  I can know say that I am 30 years old and I've had a wonderful start to the beginning of my 30th year.

Another thing that I've been working on this month is figuring out Halloween costumes for the kids.  MayLynn is going to be a fairy, so I found her some fairy wings and a wand that she will be wearing along with a cute fluffy skirt that she has.  I don't have a picture of her yet, but when I do get her into her costume I'll be sure to get a picture.  Owen's costume I finished today.  He's going to be a Jedi knight.  I found instructions for a costume online and I found him a light-saber at WalMart.  I'll take more pictures of both of them as the month progresses, but here's a picture of Owen trying on his completed costume for the first time.

Another big event in the Allen Family is Jonathan & Laurie's wedding.  Bryce flew to Salt Lake City on Wednesday to be able to be there for his brother. Jon & Laurie were sealed in the Salt Lake City temple this afternoon and they will be having a ring ceremony and a reception tomorrow.  Although the kids and I weren't able to go with them we want to send our congratulations and best wishes.  Welcome to the family Laurie!

Bryce has also been having fun being Uncle Bryce.  Here are a couple pictures that he sent me of him keeping Emery entertained while waiting for dinner, and him and Jack chillin' at Grandma's house.

 

Bryce will also be staying in Utah through Sunday for our nephew Jack's (StacyAnn & J.J.'s son) baby blessing.  He will be flying home on Monday and then our month of fall weather and fun activities will continue.

 

Quack, Quack, Quack!

We've been trying to teach MayLynn how to say her animal sounds. She's figured out that cats say "meow," dogs "bark," and ducks go "quack," but any other animal goes "roar." But no matter what the animals say, she loves to see any animal that she can.  Because of this, and because Daddy had tech rehearsals all day last Saturday, I decided to take the kids to the zoo.  

We got there just in time to see the handlers feed the sea lions.  It was really fun watching the sea lions practice some of their tricks, and I enjoyed watching my kids too.  Owen wanted to show me his "telescope" (top left picture below) and wanted to make sure that I saw the tricks that the sea lions were doing.  MayLynn was just too interested in watching the animals and wouldn't even look at the camera.

After seeing the sea lions, we went up the hill to see the big cats.  The tiger was taking a bath and the lions were lounging on a warm Saturday afternoon.  MayLynn kept going around growling at the cats - both the real ones and the pictures of them.  The middle-top picture below caught her in the middle of a growl.

After the big cats, we went to the reptile house.  MayLynn's favorite animals there were the turtles (she has a couple of toy turtles and a picture of one on her bedroom wall, so I think that's why she likes them so much). There were a couple that were swimming around that really caught her attention.  Owen was very cooperative and was willing to follow MayLynn around as she looked at the animals that she wanted to.  I even tried to get a picture of the three of us together, but containing wiggles is hard, so the picture in the middle-right below is the best I was able to get.

We also saw a few small monkeys, the peacocks, and the prairie dogs.  As we walked around Owen was a great helper, either holding MayLynn's hand so I could push the stroller, or he pushed the stroller so I could keep track of MayLynn.  It wasn't that long ago that he was in a stroller himself and he's grown so much in the past year.  Finally, we stopped by one of the ponds and let MayLynn see the ducks that she kept asking for.  She sat there for several minutes just quacking at the ducks.

Both of my kiddos were very well behaved and so before leaving the zoo we stopped by the gift shop and they each got to pick out a small toy.  Owen found a small turtle and MayLynn a little rubber ducky. Owen spent the rest of the afternoon tucking the turtle's head and legs into his shell and letting me know that the turtle was now invisible.  MayLynn just kept saying "Quack, quack, quack!" and chewing on her rubber ducky.  By the end of the day, after a trip to the library, the zoo, and Daddy's work, both kids were exhausted. The fell asleep immediately that night.  MayLynn tucked sweetly into her crib and Owen on top of his blankets.